Rewards Based Payment Network TWID Raises $2.5 Mn Led By BEENEXT, Surge

Rewards-based payment network, TWID (That’s What I Do) today announced $2.5 Mn in funding led by BEENEXT and Surge, a rapid scale-up program by Sequoia Capital India for startups in India and Southeast Asia. The company is headquartered in both Singapore and India. The round also saw participation from angel investors Kunal Shah, Rajul Garg and YourNest India.

Founded in October 2020 by Amit Khoshal, Rishi Batra and Amit Sharma, the company connects customers with merchants to pay with points earned from a Point Issuer Program. The platform empowers banks, brands, acquirers and customers to make their program completely business viable and employ a contactless payment mode for offline payments or as a checkout option on online merchants using “Pay with Rewards”. It brings together different rewards points systems across issuers, and converts the points into a fungible payment instrument, to be used universally across TWID’s network of merchants and brands.

“TWID is creating a completely new network for how we all view rewards. The platform has the same long-term potential as the traditional payment networks we see today. Issuers can convert rewards from liability to income streams while merchants and acquirers can benefit from improved conversion, and are provided with more options at checkout. We certainly look forward to a continued and long-term partnership with TWID,” said Hero Choudhary, managing partner of BEENEXT.

In the last six months, the company claims to have grown quickly, by processing  over 1 Mn transactions to-date.

Ongoing shift towards ecommerce, digital payments, instant payments and card displacements has seen an exponential increase, especially so since the beginning of the pandemic. Additionally, the adoption of digital technologies among customers has sped up by several years.

The financial disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic forced many businesses to adopt digital technologies. A recent RedSeer report mentions that the Indian digital payments industry currently stands at INR 2,153 Tn and will grow at 27% CAGR to reach INR 7,092 Tn by FY25. Additionally, the report mentions that mobile payments are likely to outplay other forms of digital payments and grow at a 60% compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $900 Bn by 2025.

Currently, some of the biggest players in the digital payments market include Kunal Shah’s CRED ,Paytm, PhonePe and MobiKwik.

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